Great Books programs in Canada are university/college programs inspired by the

Great Books A classic is a book accepted as being exemplary or particularly noteworthy. What makes a book "classic" is a concern that has occurred to various authors ranging from Italo Calvino to Mark Twain and the related questions of "Why Read the Cl ...

movement begun in the United States in the 1920s. The aim of such programs is to return to the Western

Liberal Arts Liberal arts education (from Latin "free" and "art or principled practice") is the traditional academic course in Western higher education. ''Liberal arts'' takes the term ''art'' in the sense of a learned skill rather than specifically the ...

tradition in education. Those who mount such programs consider them to be corrective of what they perceive to be an extreme disciplinary specialisation common within the academy. The essential component of such programs is a high degree of engagement with the

Western canon The Western canon is the body of high culture literature, music, philosophy, and works of art that are highly valued in the West; works that have achieved the status of classics. However, not all these works originate in the Western world, and ...

of whole primary texts deemed to be essential for a student's education. The canon includes books such as ''

Plato's Republic The ''Republic'' ( grc-gre, Πολῑτείᾱ, Politeia; ) is a Socratic dialogue, authored by Plato around 375 BCE, concerning justice (), the order and character of the just city-state, and the just man. It is Plato's best-known work, and ...

'' and ''

Dante's Divine Comedy The ''Divine Comedy'' ( it, Divina Commedia ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun 1308 and completed in around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and ...

''. Great Books programs often focus exclusively on Western culture. Their employment of primary texts dictates an interdisciplinary approach, as most of the Great Books do not fall neatly under the scope of a single contemporary academic discipline. Great Books programs often include designated discussion groups as well as lectures, and have small class sizes. Students in these programs usually receive an abnormally high degree of attention from their professors, as part of the overall aim of fostering a community of learning.

List of Great Books programs in Canada

Great Books programs in Canada include:

Newfoundland

* Memorial University's Grenfell Campus, in Cornerbrook, has
Humanities
program.

Nova Scotia

* The

University of King's College The University of King's College, established in 1789, is in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.Roper, Henry. "Aspects of the History of a Loyalist College: King's College, Windsor, and Nova Scotian Higher Education in the Nineteenth Century." Anglic ...

in Halifax mounts Canada's oldest Great Books program, the first-year

Foundation Year Programme A foundation programme, foundation program, foundation year, foundation year programme or foundation year program is a one-year introductory course to a full multi-year degree curriculum offered by many universities in the Commonwealth and elsewhere ...

, in which students spend their entire first year reading key primary texts from the Ancient Near East to the Contemporary World. *

St. Francis Xavier University St. Francis Xavier University is a public undergraduate liberal arts university located in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada. It is a member of the Maple League, a group of primarily undergraduate universities in Eastern Canada. History St. Franc ...

offers a first-year Great-Books curriculum called th
Humanities Colloquium

New Brunswick

* St. Thomas University in Fredericton has a Great Books program called the Great Books Program. The University also runs an interdisciplinary Great Books program exclusively for first-year students called The Aquinas Program.

Quebec

* Th
Liberal Arts College
at

Concordia University Concordia University ( French: ''Université Concordia'') is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1974 following the merger of Loyola College and Sir George Williams University, Concordia is one of the t ...

in Montreal offers a 3-year bachelor's degree in the Great Books. * Laval University in Quebec City offers, in French, a one-year program in Great Books. The program is called
Certificat sur les oeuvres marquantes de la culture occidentale

Ontario

The College of the Humanities Carleton University is an English-language public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1942 as Carleton College, the institution originally operated as a private, non-denominational evening college to serve returning World ...

at Carleton University in Ottawa offers Canada's most in-depth Great Books program, as a 4-year honours degree called th
Bachelor of Humanities
focusing on Philosophy, Literature, Religion, History, and Political Theory, with required courses in the History of Art and the History of Music. Its main focus is on Western Culture, but it has a significant Eastern component. Students regularly do a combined honours degree in Humanities and a more specialised discipline. The College of the Humanities also offers a combined honours in Humanities and Biology, designed for students heading to medical school. With the School of Journalism at Carleton, they also offer a joint Journalism and Humanities degree. * The Arts & Science Program at

McMaster University McMaster University (McMaster or Mac) is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main McMaster campus is on of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood and Westdale, adjacent to the Royal Botanical Ga ...

has three mandatory, core courses in the spirit of Great Books: ** Western Civilization, roughly covering from the Enûma Eliš and

Book of Genesis The Book of Genesis (from Greek ; Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית ''Bəreʾšīt'', "In hebeginning") is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word, ( "In the beginning") ...

to Renaissance thinkers ** Modern Western Civilization, roughly covering from

Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wi ...

to contemporary thinkers like

Stanley Fish Stanley Eugene Fish (born April 19, 1938) is an American literary theorist, legal scholar, author and public intellectual. He is currently the Floersheimer Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo Scho ...

** Literature, roughly covering from Homeric epics to Christa Wolf's Cassandra
The Foundations in the Humanities Program
at King's University College is a first-year Great Books program.

British Columbia

Vancouver Island University Vancouver Island University (abbreviated as VIU, formerly known as Malaspina University-College and earlier as Malaspina College) is a Canadian public university serving Vancouver Island and coastal British Columbia. Malaspina College began in 196 ...

in Nanaimo has offered a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major and minor i
Liberal Studies
since 1991. The Liberal Studies courses are interdisciplinary, seminar-based and team-taught; they deal primarily but not exclusively with the Western tradition, focus on the development of critical skills and include hands-on art and science. *

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

in Vancouver has offered th
Arts One course
since 1967. It is a team-taught, interdisciplinary course for first-year students that consists of a once weekly lecture, twice weekly seminar of 20 students, and once weekly tutorials of four students doing peer evaluation of each other's essays. Students read approximately a book a week, of which many would be considered "great books," within and beyond the Western tradition.

External links

John Searle, "The Storm Over the University," ''The New York Review of Books'', December 6, 1990

{{DEFAULTSORT:Great Books programs In Canada Education in Canada